As a child psychologist at the Thompson Center, my research and clinical work focus on helping children and families affected by autism. A few years ago, Center Director Stephen Kanne and I were developing and testing a new treatment for children with autism. But we had difficulty finding measures to track short-term improvements in the children’s symptoms.

In research, we need such measures to demonstrate the effectiveness of new treatments and approaches. In clinical practice, such measures can provide critical information for families, therapists and doctors as we discuss and update our treatment strategies and goals.

As it turns out, we weren’t the first to recognize the lack of good measures for tracking treatment-related improvements over the short term. As we searched the literature and met with colleagues, we discovered that this was a major problem for both researchers and clinicians.

Developing a new tool To meet this need, we developed a questionnaire we called the Autism Impact Measure (AIM). We designed it to pick up short-term improvement across the range of autism symptoms. We wanted to be able to measure even small improvements in a child’s social interactions, communication and repetitive behaviors.

To make sure we’re capturing the most useful information, AIM assesses both the frequency of symptoms and their effect on daily life over a two-week period. It includes 41 questions for parents. For example, it asks parents to report how often their child “resisted changes in routines” on a scale of 1 to 5. It asks how much this symptom interfered with their child’s daily function, also on a scale of 1 to 5.

First we tested the AIM here at the Thompson Center with 102 children with autism and their parents. The parents found the questionnaire quick and easy to complete. Both parents and clinicians found it useful.

Encouraged, we knew we had to complete more research to ensure that we had a valid and reliable assessment tool. We needed to test it in a much larger sample of children and families, alongside other measures of autism symptoms.

The results of this initial project are very promising. We have found that our questionnaire is easy to use and efficient. Its results are reliable and consistent across many different users. And it’s measuring what we intended it to measure – real benefits across short periods of time.

Now we’re working with autism experts across the country to test whether the AIM accurately assesses improvements across different types of therapies and other treatments. We look forward to reporting the results.

In closing, I want to express our gratitude for the support of the Autism Speaks community and all the families who have participated in this research. Ultimately, we hope that this work will improve care and quality of life for children with autism across North America and beyond.

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The Autism Speaks blog features opinions from people throughout the autism community. Each blog represents the point of view of the author and does not necessarily reflect Autism Speaks' beliefs or point of view.